Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a collection of annals narrating the history of the Anglo-Saxons and their settlement in Britain. Much of the information in these documents consists of rumours of events that happened elsewhere and so may be unreliable. However for some periods and places, the chronicle is the only substantial surviving source of information. The manuscripts were produced in different places, and each manuscript represents the biases of its scribes. The chronicle has entries spanning AD 1 to 1154, and two manuscripts have an entry - misdated - for 60 BC, recording Julius Caesar's invasion of Britain. The term Anglo-Saxon appears to be a later addition, as the first printed edition (1692) was called "Chronicum saxonicum."

After the original chronicle was compiled, copies were kept at various monasteries and were updated independently. Sometimes items important to the locals, such as the fertility of the harvest or the paucity of bees, would be eagerly recorded, whereas distant political events could be overlooked. A combination of the individual annals allows us to develop an overall picture, a document that was the first continuous history written by Europeans in their own language. Thus the various versions of the chronicle are an important development in historiography as well as a useful historical documents in their own right.

There are nine surviving manuscripts (including two copies), of which eight are written entirely in Anglo-Saxon, while the ninth is in Anglo-Saxon with a translation of each annal into Latin. One (the Peterborough Chronicle) contains early Middle English as well as Anglo-Saxon. The oldest (Corp. Chris. MS 173) is known as the Parker Chronicle, after Matthew Parker who once owned it, or the Winchester Chronicle.

The surviving manuscripts are:

• Version A: The Parker Chronicle (Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS. 173); Cottonian Fragment (British Museum, Cotton MS. Otho B xi, 2)
• Version B: The Abingdon Chronicle I (British Museum, Cotton MS. Tiberius A vi.)
• Version C: The Abingdon Chronicle II (British Museum, Cotton MS. Tiberius B i.)
• Version D: The Worcester Chronicle (British Museum, Cotton MS. Tiberius B iv.)
• Version E: The Laud (or "Peterborough") Chronicle (Bodleian, MS. Laud 636)
• Version F: The Bilingual Canterbury Epitome (British Museum, Cotton MS. Domitian A viii.) - entries in English and Latin.
• Version H: Cottonian Fragment (British Museum, Cotton MS. Domitian A ix.)
• Version I: An Easter Table Chronicle (British Museum, Cotton MS. Caligula A xv.)

Version A is of particular importance for the dating of the chronicle. The manuscript is in the handwriting of some thirteen or fourteen scribes and the first scribe wrote as far as 891. For this reason the composition of the chronicle is generally dated to the reign of King Alfred.

Some of the annals are derived from earlier sources such as Prosper and Bede and the annal for 430 demonstrates this:

Prosper of Aquitaine wrote that in 430: “Palladius was sent by Pope Celestine to the Scots who believed in Christ, and was ordained as their first bishop”. This story was known to Bede and was repeated by him: “In the year 430 Palladius was sent by Pope Celestine to the Scots that believed in Christ to be their first bishop”. This annal was then copied into the earliest version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (version A, compiled in 891): “430. In this year bishop Palladius was sent by Pope Celestine to the Scots to strengthen their faith”. But during the twelfth century the manuscript was altered to read: “… Palladius (vel Patricius)…”. In another version of the chronicle (version E, written in 1121) Palladius disappears and is replaced by Patrick: “430. In this year Patrick was sent by pope Celestine to preach baptism to the Scots”.

Notice how with each scribe the story changes a little, so starting from Palladius being sent to the Irish who were already Christian, it eventually becomes a tale about Patrick being sent to convert the Irish.

Other annals were simply invented. Under 477 we read that Wlencing was the son of Ælle, but Wlencing is a patronymic meaning ‘son of Wlenca’, so he cannot also have been son of Ælle! Clearly the chronicler has carelessly extracted Wlencing from an early form of the place-name Lancing. Moving on to 501, Portsmouth is located at the mouth of a port; it is not named after Port; he was quarried out of the place-name. Then under 508 Natanleag means ‘wet meadow’, so it was not named after a slain Welsh king called Natanleod; he is an invention. And under 514 we find Wihtgar, who in 534 is given the Isle of Wight, and in 544 is buried at Wihtgaraburg. But Wihtgaraburg does not mean 'Wihtgar's fortress' but 'the fortress of the inhabitants of Wight', and Wight itself is derived from Romano-British Vectis (Ekwall 1947). Clearly, if these annals are fiction, as they plainly are, then the other early annals are suspect.

The translated texts (together with explanatory materials) are available in books and on the Internet, so scholars at all levels can now consult them directly.

See Anglo-Saxon kingdom genealogy for a comparison of the genealogies of the Canterbury and Winchester manuscripts with the one given by Snorri Sturluson in his Edda.

References

• Anne Savage, "The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles", ISBN 1-85833-478-0, pub CLB 1997
• Peter Hunter Blair, An Introduction to Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 352-355
• Ekwall, E. 1947. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names, 3rd edition.
• Michael Swanton, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles London, J.M. Dent 1996